Targeting the New Orleans riverfront as high ground poised for redevelopment, local firm Eskew+Dumez+Ripple, along with Hargreaves Associates, Chan Krieger Sieniewicz, and TEN Arquitectos, created a development plan that envisions the design of a sequence of public spaces. The plan would enhance existing public sites such as the Moonwalk, and create new urban nodes that would link the city to the river’s edge.

Jury: “This is an innovative and radical approach to readdressing the levee on the Mississippi and reconnecting the citizens of New Orleans back to their riverfront. The typologies that are being developed will transform the visual and physical connection of the city to the river.”

Client: “The big idea is to connect the city with its major defining asset, the Mississippi River. Given the unusual topography we have, the riverfront is the high natural levee, and the whole city has not physically connected with it in a way you might typically find in other cities along rivers. In a city like ours—where we are always balancing history, preservation, and reinvention—this is a bold move at a large scale that is authentic to the city’s character, but also new and creative.” —William Gilchrist, FAIA, director of Place-Based Planning, City of New Orleans